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Headings and the Styles Menu

Importance for Accessibility

Providing proper heading styling and hierarchy is crucial for allowing in-page navigation for screen readers users.  Additionally, proper heading hierarchy gives context to topics and subtopics on the page and help every user understand your content.  For additional information, please read the Heading Guide on the Division of Information Technology Accessibility website.

What is a Heading?

Headings denote sections of content on your page and help establish the hierarchy of that content. In Word, you can find default heading styling in the Styles Menu on the Home ribbon.

Styles ribbon

The style bar allows you to select text on your page and give it a programmatic style.  Programmatic styles interact with screen readers to communicate purpose to the user.  

Steps to Convert Normal Text into a Heading

  1. Select the text
  2. Select Home in the menu bar
  3. Left click the appropriate heading styling in the Style ribbon

Heading Hierarchy

Headings have six levels: h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, and Word exposes levels 1 - 4 by default.  Levels 5 and 6 are rarely used and usually are not necessary as content rarely nests that deeply.  Below are important rules to consider when making heading hierarchy in your documents.

  1. Heading hierarchy must be linear to denote proper content order
    1. h1 must be followed by h2 which must be followed by h3
    2. Skipping heading levels breaks criteria in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
  2. You can have more than one h1 in a document depending on the formatting of the document. Web pages only have one h1 per page.
  3. You can reset your headings from h3 or h4 to h2 if you are making a topic change.
    1. This reverse hierarchy is permitted to allow for multiple topics on a single page.

Example of Proper Heading Order

  • Chapter 1 (h1)
    • Topic1 (h2)
      • Subtopic (h3)
    • Topic2 (h2)
    • Topic3 (h2)
      • Subtopic (h3)
        • Subsubtopic (h4)
  • Chapter 2 (h1)

Example of Improper Heading Order

  • Chapter 1 (h1)
      • Topic1 (h3)
    • Topic2 (h2)
        • Subtopic (h4)

Warning!

Word's accessibility checker does not check for heading hierarchy errors. You will need to use the navigation pane to properly check your heading structure. We will learn about the navigation pane in the next lesson.